WILLISTON, N.D. (AP) — John Andelin says creating a marble sculpture of former President George H.W. Bush has been an amazing and humbling experience.
The Williston pathologist does sculpting as a hobby. His sculpture of Bush, weighing about 2,700 pounds and standing 9 feet, 1 inch tall, was unveiled at the George and Barbara Bush Center on the University of New England campus in Biddeford, Maine, on Sept. 17. It was carved from a block of Colorado Yule marble.
Andelin's journey from turning an idea to a completed sculpture of Bush took several years. It filled many long hours in his spare time, carving and chiseling away at the marble in his Williston home.
"I was working on it on and off for about four years. It was all in my spare time, since I have a full-time job at the hospital," he said.
The project would have never come together in the first place if he hadn't offered to do it.
"The initial contact was made by me. I wrote a letter and submitted some photos, and they responded. Then I hired a professional agent and he negotiated an arrangement to do the sculpture," he said.
In February 2003, Andelin met Bush and showed him some pictures and initial drawings. He said the former president and his people liked what they saw and gave him some suggestions of their own.
Andelin also did a three-dimensional scan of Bush's face and hands to use for reference points, so he could put the information from the scan into his computer and create a 3D model to plot out the sculpture.
One of the first steps is getting the marble.
"It was trucked up here in 2004. I chose Colorado Yule marble from the town of Marble, Colorado, because some of the best marble in the U.S. comes from there," Andelin said.
The slab of marble originally was 19,000 pounds, he said. He used the 3D scans of Bush to plot the design of the sculpture before he even touched a tool, to save monotonous hours of measuring and plotting by hand.
"It was a lot of hard work, a lot of hard shaping. It was a challenging effort, to try to create something that he would like," he said.
Once it was finished, the sculpture was shipped to Maine. A small section of the Bush Center's roof was temporarily removed so the sculpture could be hoisted into place by a crane.
At the unveiling, he said, "The vice president of the university spoke, then Bush spoke. Then he called me up to say a few words, impromptu. There was a really nice reception afterward. They treated me very generously."
The day became even more special while talking with Bush afterward.
"We visited, and Bush asked me if I was doing anything else that afternoon. I said I didn't have much going on, maybe some sightseeing. He offered to have me come over to his summer compound in Kennebunkport, Maine," Andelin said.
He agreed and traveled to the Bush summer home, where he spent part of the afternoon.
"Every artist who does a sculpture is trying to make a statement. Hopefully it's a statement that he's a great man," Andelin said of the former president.
He is involved in some early discussions for further work for the Bush family but said those discussions still are preliminary.
Andelin has done woodcarving as a hobby since he was 15. He began carving marble in the mid-1990s.
He and his wife, Cindy, have seven children and eight grandchildren. He received his MD. degree in 1981, from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Andelin has been practicing as a hospital-based pathologist since 1985.
